Here's to the close of 2020 and new hope for 2021!

 I thought I would participate in the Best of 2020 linky party hosted by Cheryl @Meadow Mist Designs. She has asked that a new blog post be written highlighting the 5 best of my blog post from 2020. Cheryl has left it up to us to determine which post are 'the best'!

The first 'best' up for me is my post from October 31st when I posted about my finish of my Look on the Bright Side quilt. This quilt was made from my participation in the Quiet Play Pattern Club from 2019. All the blocks are paper pieced and designed by Kristy Lea. 

I really enjoyed sewing the paper pieced blocks in rainbow colors and the text blocks!

I picked this post because although this quilt took me longer than usual to finish, I kept working on it and finally finished it~~~no UFO here!

Second 'best' is from my blog post on August 30th. This post showed the finish of my I Spy quilt featuring by grandson. He still loves to take out the quilt and 'spy' all the things on the quilt! There are over 100 things to search for!

My third 'best' is Manifest, a quilt I featured in my May 13th blog post. I designed this quilt for my daughter. She loves very simple designs and sent me some ideas to work with. This quilt also feature some of my natural dyed fabrics!

The fourth 'best' is my Breaking the Rules quilt featured in my March 19th blog post. This quilt was created as part of the #improvtrianglesewalong by Nicholas Ball. I really loved learning this technique and how this quilt turned out! It now hangs in my quilt room.

I quilted it using a dense straight line/matchstick type quilting...much denser than I usually quilt!

Finally, my fifth 'best' is my Orphism quilt. It is based on the Cubism Art movement which is known for it's abstraction and bright colors. This was featured in my 

May 6th blog post.

I really like this quilt that is made with 2 different sizes of HST. The pop of yellow really makes the quilt stand out. 

Well, that is my 5 best! It was hard to pick only 5 out of 20 quilts that I made during 2020, however it was fun to look back through the past year. Hope you enjoyed it!

I'm linking to the Best of 2020 @Meadow Mist Designs.

Manifest and more text and picture blocks

Today I would like to present Manifest!

In the beginning of April, my youngest daughter ask me if I could 'try to make a cute minimal wall hanging? Pleeaaaasssseeee?' She wants it for over her bed as 'a piece of you with me in San Antonio.' 

(She will be moving there this summer to finish her studies) 

She sent these as examples.

The bottom one is a mural done by an artist friend.

I thought that it would give me a good opportunity to use some of my natural dyed fabrics that I hand dyed last summer. So after pulling them out and searching for more inspiration, I came up with a plan. 

I used 5 of my hand dyed fabrics and some Kona cottons. The yellow in the sun was dyed with turmeric, the orange/red is dyed with madder root, the orange/brown is madder root with soda ash, the yellowish brown is avocado with iron and the gray is dyed with black beans. The blue Kona is Prussian, the gray is med gray and the borders are white. The piecing was a little tricky but I did it without much waste! The inverted V could be interpreted as a mountain or as shelter. 

The backing is a lovely yellow/orange from the Sunny Splash Collection my Lecien. The machine quilting is all straight stitched 1/2" apart except the gray which is 1/4". The finished size is 36" x 44".

I love this wallhanging (I love when I step out of my comfort zone and try/learn new challenges) 

and most importantly, so does my daughter! 

Thanks to my hubby for being the quilt holder!

I also worked on 2 more of my Quiet Play Pattern Club 2019 blocks...one text and one picture! Last post I asked for recommendations as to which color I should do the next text block in. Light pink was chosen so here it is! The word cut with the rainbow scissors picture block.  

Here are all the text blocks together so far!

Only one more to go! Which color next? Light blue or light purple? 

Make is dark purple

Here are most of the picture blocks.

I made one more that I used a light blue background because I used white for the cloud. I will either remake that block with a white background or chose a different block. Many bonus blocks were included in the pattern club.

Linking up to Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop?, Brag About Your Beauty, Peacock Party, Finished or Not Friday, Friday Foto Fun, and My Quilt Infatuation and UFO Busting 

What have you been working on?